An overview of my goals for 2017

Published on: 08 Jan 2017

It’s that time of the year. The time to make resolutions and set goals for the
coming twelve months. I keep reading that the key to achieving your goals is
accountability. Some people even built webapps to help with habit creation.

I must admit I’m not a massive fan of resolutions and I much prefer goals as I
find them to be more specific. This allows me to focus on creating the
appropriate systems to give life to my visions.

By publishing this post, I intend to share with you the list of goals that I have
set for myself so I can hopefully look back and see all (or at least most) the
boxes ticked.

I have divided my goals into three categories: Career, Creativity and Health.

Career

Launch a product and monetize it

I’ve already made a start with
tings.co. I want
to use this opportunity to learn about product marketing, branding and business
in general. Even if it fails, that’s ok. I’m in it for the lessons.

Work abroad again

Over the last few months after coming back from the UK, I realised that my place
just wasn’t in Paris. The incredible energy and creative vibe that I found in
Brighton and London just doesn’t compare with what Paris has to offer. I need to
discover new cultures, open my mind, meet and work with amazing talented people.
I hope to find that wherever I end up moving.

Hack a computer science education

I unfortunately never had the financial means to put myself through a proper
computer science curriculum. However with platforms like open courseware and
YouTube, top universities like Harvard, Carnegie Mellon, Stanford and MIT allow
me access to their complete courses for free including learning material.
I fully intend use these sites to my advantage.
A guy by the name of Scott Young
did just that. Truly Inspiring.

Join a company with a mission

I want to work on a meaningful product designed to help people in their daily
lives and not just pump out code for average clients.

Improve my knowledge of linux and Devops

I find system administration and devops in general to be quite fun and I can
totally see myself switching careers if I ever get bored of programming.
(Not sure I’ll ever get bored of programming though)

Learn and build things using C

The vast majority of the popular programming languages today compile to C. What
attracts me to C is the fact that it allows you to do pretty much anything. It
gives you complete control over the system and forces you to be very
explicit about what you want to do. Plus, knowing how memory management and
pointers work is always a bonus when writing in higher level languages.

Creativity

Photography

I absolutely love photography, only probblem is: I’m a total noob. Taking
pictures is a way for me to get out of my head after long hours of programming.
This year I want to get serious about it and publish at least one picture a week
either on Flickr or 500px.

Creative Writing

Writing code is fun and comes naturally to me. Writing essays and articles is a
different thing. Again, just like with photography I want to see if I can
publish an article a week. I strongly believe that consistency is the only way
to make progress. Also I’d love to write a book at some point in the future,
so yeah.

Health

This year I want to make sure I don’t fall into the trap of burnout. By that I
mean making time for myself and not push myself too hard. Balance is everything
in producing great quality work.
Nutrition is also another aspect of my life that I want to improve. A good,
balanced and healthy diet means more energy both physically and mentally, which
is always welcome.

These are my goals for 2017, I’m determined to achieve them, so let’s see what
happens. I always like a good challenge.